China Must Address Gender Imbalance to Tackle Demographic Crisis, Nobel Laureate Says

China’s massive gender imbalance will become a “fundamental demographic problem” for the country unless society’s attitude toward women’s contribution to society changes, Nobel Prize-winning economist Esther Duflo said in an interview with Caixin.

“The ratio of boys to girls still continues to be extraordinarily high,” Duflo, a professor of poverty alleviation and development economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Caixin in a Feb. 28 interview. “A lot of this one-child generation with a huge lopsided number of boys are now trying to look for partners and there are just not enough women.”